Dear Editor,
I live in the United States and try to come to Guyana for a few months each year. Right now I’m on my annual visit home. In a country where the racial divide between Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese has continually spun out of control for more than 50 years, and where every racial infraction by either side – real or imagined – deepens the divide and adds to the intolerance of each race, l feel hesitant about raising the issue I’m writing about but I decided that I have to.
Recently (Jan 21) a young woman came to the gate of the house where I’m staying with family and handed out a brochure called “ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies 2007”. Page 6 of this brochure carries paragraphs about the 12 new stadia (like most Guyanese I prefer to say stadiums) the region has built for the World Cup and this is what it says for Guyana: “Located in the East Bank Demerara, Providence Stadium will have the capacity to seat 16,000 persons and will host Super 8 matches. With Guyana’s distinct Indian heritage you are sure to experience the fusion of West Indian and East Indian culture.” (the emphasis is mine).
I know that Indo-Caribbean people often refer to West Indian culture as a “Creole” culture which excludes them and/or is rejected by them. I have also heard this “Creole” culture referred to as the culture of Black people with no recognition of how anti-African it really is. It is also anti-Amerindian. I remember when Sister Gwennie whom I knew from the early WPA said “I’m not a West Indian, I’m an East Indian”. But the brochure is an official document. Whatever the intentions of the person or persons who wrote the sentence I’ve emphasized, here is what that sentence actually means: That West Indian and East Indian are two separate cultures. That West Indian culture has nothing East Indian in it but is made up of the cultures of the other groups – Africans, Amerindians, Portuguese, Chinese, Mixed, not one of whom has a distinct culture.
None of the paragraphs on the other 11 stadiums says anything about race. This includes the paragraph on Trinidad and Tobago.
Over the years both majority parties have at times shown major indifference to the sensitivity of race, and I cannot determine if the wording of the paragraph on Guyana is a result of indifference or oversight by those who wrote it. And this brochure is not new. Have others commented on it or am I the only person who is startled by what it says?
Incidentally, for those for whom it matters I am a mixture of African, Indian, Portuguese and European which in the real world means that I am Black.
Yours faithfully,
Abbyssinian Colin Carto